The Future of uPod is safe!

By the end of January I’ve posted an announcement that uPod is about to become open source. As the resonance was very restrained it quickly became clear, that fulfilling that plan would effectively kill uPod, as there would be no developers to maintain and further develop it. But as some of you and I myself still love uPod killing it wasn’t really an option. That’s the reason why I decided to go on developing uPod — even if my free time is rare. Sorry for all the confusion.

Since the beginning of February I am now working on uPod 4. Its main goal is to reduce the server costs, so that it is no more essential for me to sell a specific number of licenses per month just to get the servers paid. This is solved by moving most of the podcast parsing and syncing logic from the server into the client.

Making the server usage an optional feature will make it possible to publish uPod 4 as a “freemium” app: The free version will no longer be a trial but a full featured free podcast player! The paid premium license will add some enhanced features like e.g. the current cross device sync, chromecast support and the automatic download. Your current uPod license will be automatically migrated to uPod premium — so if you’ve already paid for it you wont be charged again. Making uPod free should also help to increase its visibility.

I hope you like these news. More information will be published as soon as uPod 4 goes into beta test.